Prayer to the Five Holy Wounds, Prayer Book of Maaseik
anonymous Netherlandish Master
ca. 1500
6.3 x 5.2 cm
credit: Koninklijke Bibliotheek; Den Haag, KB, 133 F 3 73v

THE FIVE WOUNDS OF JESUS

During his crucifixion, it has been assumed Jesus received five wounds:

• Jesus’ hands were pierced by nails to affix him to the cross-beam of the cross.

• Both his feet were pierced by a nail hammered into the vertical beam.

• Jesus’ heart was lanced by a Roman soldier after he had died on the cross.

There is no mention of the Five Wounds, as such, in the Bible. John 19:34 does describe how Jesus’ heart was lanced, and later (20:27) reports that Jesus, appearing after his resurrection, urged the disciple Thomas to, “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing.”

The apocryphal Gospel of Peter (ca. 190), embellishing on canonical accounts of the crucifixion, reports that “…they drew out the nails from the hands of the Lord, and laid him upon the earth, and the whole earth quaked, and great fear arose.” In his Tractatus in Iohannem (121), Augustine of Hippo (354–430) describes Jesus' wounds. Composed in 532 by Pope Boniface II after a purported revelation from John the Evangelist, the Golden Mass makes other early non-conical references to Jesus’ wounds.

For the early Church, however, the issue of Jesus’ divinity was foremost and it is not until the 11th and 12th centuries when Jesus’ humanity became the focus of popular piety that devotion to the Five Wounds found fullest expression. While praying on Mount Verna during a forty-day fast, Francis of Assisi (ca. 1181–1226), according to Brother Leo (d. ca. 1270) his disciple and secretary, had “a vision of a seraph, a six-winged angel on a cross. This angel gave him the gift of the five wounds of Christ.” Clare of Assisi (1194–1253), Mechtilde of Hackeborn (ca. 1240–1298), Angela of Foligno (ca. 1248–1309), Gertrude the Great (ca. 1256–1302), Bridget of Sweden (1303–1373), and Julian of Norwich (ca. 1342–1416) all left visionary paeans to the Wounds of Jesus.

In the 13th century an anonymous English monk rhapsodized with Gothic poignancy,

White was his naked breast,
And red with blood his side,
Blood on his lovely face,
His wounds deep and wide

Stiff with death his arms,
High spread upon the Rood:
From five places in his body
Flowed the streams of blood.

As the Middle Ages drew to a close, Thomas à Kempis (ca. 1380–1471) in the Imitation of Christ was to write,

If you can not soar up as high as Christ sitting on his throne, behold him hanging on his cross. Rest in Christ's Passion and live willingly in his holy wounds. You will gain marvelous strength and comfort in adversities You will not care that men despise you. . . Had we but, with Thomas, put our fingers into the print of his nails and thrust our hands into his side! If we had we but known ourselves his sufferings in a deep and serious consideration and tasted the astonishing greatness of his love, the joys and miseries of the life would soon become indifferent to us. (Book II/1)

Probably the most elaborate and influential Medieval accounts of Jesus' wounds was written two centuries earlier by Bonaventure (1221–1274). Early in chapter 3 of this exceedingly gory narrative of the Passion, Vitis Mystica, he describes how at Jesus’ crucifixion,

They dug, therefore, and dug deep holes not only in his hands and feet and but also in his side. And with a lance of rage, they pierced the depths of his Sacred Heart, which had long before been wounded by a lance of love.

Not only is his one of the most influential Medieval devotionals, it also makes one of the earliest explicit references to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

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